Farmers' lawsuit over ag waiver thrown out

A judge's decision could speed new rules regulating polluted runoff from farms, rules that growers say will be costly and burdensome.

Alex Breitler

A judge's decision could speed new rules regulating polluted runoff from farms, rules that growers say will be costly and burdensome.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley last week sided with state water quality officials, finding the environmental reports they prepared supporting the new rules were adequate.

Frawley also ruled that temporary rules already in place fail to protect water quality. But he said they can remain until the permanent regulations are written.

His decision is the latest legal twist in what's known as the "ag waiver."

Under the federal Clean Water Act, farmers are not required to get permits to cover the polluted irrigation water that drains off their fields into rivers and streams.

However, they're now required to join coalitions and pay a per-acre fee to help fund water quality testing and educational outreach.

The permanent rules could add burdens, such as more frequent reporting and a requirement that farmers monitor groundwater quality.

The ag waiver has been attacked from multiple fronts, with farmers saying it is burdensome, and environmentalists saying it doesn't go far enough.

Both sides filed lawsuits. In his ruling last week, Frawley dismissed the farmers' complaint entirely and delivered a limited success to the environmentalists.

With the farmers' challenge aside, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board can proceed with the rules, said Ken Landau, the board's assistant executive officer.

"We have been working hard to reduce the paperwork and the costs of the program," Landau said. "There's a finite amount of money out there and we would rather have that money going to actual on-the-ground improvements, as opposed to spending it on paperwork."

But a leader of the farm coalition that covers San Joaquin County said the judge's ruling was a disappointment.

"Instead of having time to work on negotiating a more reasonable, less onerous order, we are now on the fast track of having our order adopted," said John Brodie, who coordinates the local coalition. "There's no indication from (water board) staff that they're interested in negotiating anything more reasonable."

While that order has not yet been written, Brodie said the expectation is that the cost for growers to comply will triple, if not quadruple.

Stockton's Bill Jennings, whose California Sportfishing Protection Alliance also sued over the ag waiver, said he hoped the board would develop regulations that "comply with the law, are protective of our waters and which penalize bad actors and reward farmers who implement measures to prevent pollution."

He said the environmentalists could probably work with the farmers to resolve differences, "except for the water board's costly, unwieldy and ineffective bureaucratic octopus."